Andrew Gale: Victory over Surrey was just what the doctor ordered!

WE needed a win at Yorkshire to finally get us out of the blocks in the County Championship and it was a great victory in the end for us against Surrey at Headingley – and just what we needed.

Although, that said, I thought it was going to be ruined by the weather. But the lads dug deep into their reserves and put a good bowling performance in on the last day and we wrapped up the win just in time.

The forecast kept changing during the game. To begin with, a couple of days out, you could see that Wednesday was going to be a bad day.

But then it improved and promptly got worse again and we were on and off a little bit which was frustrating, particularly on the final afternoon when we came off for about fifteen minutes when we had them six or seven down.

So it was one of those where we knew that if we got on for a period of time, then we would bowl them out and luckily we managed to get back on and get the job done and claim the victory.

There were some really good contributions from the team. Rooty [Joe Root] and Jonny’s [Bairstow] partnership was just fantastic and really showed why those two guys are playing Test cricket and they are right on top of their game.

It was fantastic to watch and they were flying. Don’t forget that we were 45-3, but they produced just a masterclass really and it was great viewing.

Rooty has been great to have around in the past few weeks and he has been a fantastic influence upon the team.

Obviously, him and Jonny will go away with England and we probably will not see them for a while now, but they have definitely left their mark on us.

Credit to the bowlers on the last day as well. Especially with us going down to three seamers with David Willey going down injured with an abductor strain. We needed the bowlers to dig deep and that is what they did.

We knew there would be enough in the pitch if the bowlers put the ball in good areas for long enough and we managed to do that.

As for me, I took a bang to my knee in the game, but it’s alright, just a bit sore. I was fielding at short leg and I shouldn’t have really been fielding there!

Although you can’t really look into the table much at this time of year, it is nice to be at the top of the league and get a win on the board and get some confidence and we take that down to Somerset for our four-dayer which starts tomorrow.